Fringe – Episode 5 (Season 2): “Dream Logic”
The science, while a little sketchy, wasn’t half-bad in this episode of Fringe. Despite this, I found the story itself rather lackluster.
The Plot:In Seattle, Greg, a businessman, walks through his office, late for a meeting with his boss. As he moves through the office, he notices that everyone he sees has the heads of demons rather than their proper heads. When he enters the conference room, he sees that his boss is also a demon, so he bludgeons him to death with his briefcase. The co-workers who wrestle Greg to the ground notice that his eyes are cloudy and twitching.
The Fringe team is called to Seattle to evaluate the case. They interview Greg at the hospital and he tells them what he saw in the office. Suddenly, he begins thrashing wildly in bed, his hair turns completely white, and he collapses, dead. Walter assists that local medical examiner with the autopsy and determines that Greg died of “acute exhaustion.” He arranges for the body to be sent to his lab at Harvard for a more complete, Walter style, autopsy.
Talking with Greg’s wife, Dunham and Peter learn that he had a history of sleep walking, but it hadn’t been a problem for several months since visiting some specialists.
A second incident has occurred: a woman driving a mini-van told her husband she saw a monster and drove her car into an innocent cyclist. She died at the scene and was found to have the same white hair Greg did.
Back in his lab, Walter finds a microchip implanted in Greg’s midbrain. A quick look at the body of the second victim shows an incision on the neck suggesting she had the same operation. Broyles takes the microchip to Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamics who identifies it as a chip designed to work on the thalamus to promote sleep. She identifies its creator as a Dr. Nayak, also in Seattle.
Dunham and Peter pay Dr. Nayak a visit. He identifies both victims as patients of his who are taking part in a clinical study on the brain chip. He takes Dunham and Peter to his office only to finf there has been a break-in. Nayak’s office has been trashed and the computers containing all the patient data are missing.
Walter and Peter hypothesize that someone is using the chips as a rudimentary form of mind control. Meanwhile, in a dark room, we see shadowy someone access the clinic’s computers and select a patient — a waitress at a local Greek restaurant. Soon she begins hallucinating before attacking the chef and then collapsing, dead. Nayak identifies her as one of his patients as well.
Back on the east coast, Walter has been experimenting with the chip and discovers that it siphons the patient’s dreams away so that they never dream. The chips can also be used to place the patient in a dreaming state while awake. Finally, he discovers that whoever is on the receiving end of the chip gets an incredible high from the stolen dreams. Olivia realizes that they are looking for someone addicted to the dreams. A brief amount of detective works reveal that Dr. Nayak himself is the perpetrator. He has a dream-addicted dark side that is causing all the problems. They track him to his home just as he is using his machine to activate the chip in an airline pilot’s head. Dunham destroys the computer, saving the pilot (and his crew and passengers), but killing Dr. Nayak in the process.
Overall this week, I felt the science was not entirely implausible, a step up from the usual. So most of what follows are probably best regarded as “nit-picks”
1. Wherein I Make Some Concessions
I agree that exhaustion/stress can cause high cortisone levels and dehydration. For the sake of the story, I will also accept that it can cause sudden loss of hair pigment (a la Jean Valjean) and thyroid disorders. However, I am at a loss to explain how it can cause the sudden appearance of large patches of thickened flaking skin. Sure, dehydration and low thyroid can cause skin problems, but it is the entire skin, not just large discrete patches.
2. We Solve the Problem by Breaking the Space-Time Continuum
Let me get this straight: the brain chip is used to correct non-REM sleep disorders. It does this by siphoning off dreams. Now, dreams generally occur in REM sleep, which comes after non-REM sleep. So the chips fix the sleep by removing something that hasn’t even occurred yet.
3. Department of Redundancy Department
“Blood CBC” is hopelessly redundant. CBC stands for complete blood count, so a blood CBC is a blood complete blood count.
A CBC looks at the blood cells (white, red, platelets). It doesn’t look at hormones like thyroxine and cortisol, that’s a different test entirely.
4. OMG, n00b
Yes hackers steal passwords. They also mount DDOS attacks, but these are two separate things. Claiming the lack of DDOS attack means that a hacker couldn’t be involved means the FBI (or the Fringe writers) need much better forensic computer experts. (And what would a DDOS attack against a single clinic server accomplish, anyway?)
5. It’s Not Brain Surgery — Wait, Maybe It Is
The thalamus is located deep in the center of the brain. Any surgery to reach it, let alone implant a chip in it, is going to be a major undertaking — a hole in the skull needs to made after all — and wouldn’t be performed as an outpatient clinic procedure.
The thalamus is part of the diencephalon, making it forebrain, not midbrain.
And good luck getting the clinical trial approved by the IRB.
6. Your Suspicions Are Suspicious
Hearing that one of his employees was suspected, one would think that Dr. Nayak would have volunteered the information about his assistant being missing earlier in the day, rather than waiting until the end of it (or was that the effect of Hyde-Nayak?).
7. A Shot In The Dark
Peter, Dunham and the other FBI agent can’t find an on/off switch or a plug or a circuit breaker between the three of them? So the next logical step is shooting the server?
It’s the reverse of last week. This time, I found the science acceptable, but the story tepid — so they cancel out and the clock stays at 11:55
A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:25 am
Why can’t a DDOS be used against a single server?
October 16th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Official Comment
Oh it can, a DDOS attack just didn’t fit the scenario here.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Oh yeah. I suppose writers just decided to use a fancy word :)
What really puzzles me is how would someone feel pleasure by stealing others nightmares. Was he a pervert? And why all the nightmares were so similar?
Also, what’s the problem with shooting the server? Seems to be pretty strait-forward and efficient. At least she didn’t aim at the display. That would be really embarrassing :)
October 16th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Did Greg’s wife not know he had a computer chip implanted in his brain? Why else wouldn’t she have mentioned it during the interview with Olivia and Peter?
“Oh, by the way since your asking all these questions about sleep, and my husband uncharacteristically went on a murder rampage, I should pobably mention that he had a computer chip imlanted in his brain to fix his sleep problems. You don’t think that could be connected, do you?.”
http://blog.cordialdeconstruction.com/2009/10/16/minor-comments-on-fringe-episode-5-season-2-dream-logic/
October 16th, 2009 at 8:15 am
A better question about the remote server is: why on Earth wasn’t changing the password and not handing it out to every single employee the first thing you did? Someone now has your main server and presumably your password and you’re just going to leave your only backup unprotected?
Also, until now Bower-guy has just been really wise. Now, he appears to be supernatural. What a disappointment there.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I’m pretty sure that anything that causes depigmentation of hair would only affect the hair being produced at the time, not the already-grown-out hair. Sudden white hair could be explained by all the hairs that weren’t white falling out, but none of the victims appeared to have any white hair beforehand. Considering the show, this is a minor nitpick, but it did irritate me.
October 16th, 2009 at 10:08 am
A denial of service attack isn’t usually an attempt to break into a computer system; it’s generally intended to make a system or service unavailable, generally because the instigator either doesn’t like the target company, or because they want to outdo all their hacker friends by bringing down a bigger target.
As a means of cracking into a system, bulk attacks can have a DOS side effect. Of course, they also raise massive red flags to the admins that someone’s trying to hack into their system, assuming the admins monitor the their systems. I would guess that bulk dictionary username/password attacks aren’t used very often to break into well secured systems. Most systems will lock out an account after a certain number of invalid password submissions in a certain time period, making such attacks highly impractical.
October 16th, 2009 at 10:13 am
“Also, what’s the problem with shooting the server? Seems to be pretty strait-forward and efficient.”
You mean besides all the problems associated with discharging a firearm in an enclosed space, like permanent hearing damage, inhalation of lead particles, and significant ricochet potential (especially when shooting at a metal server rather than a soft flesh human)?
October 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
This was the first episode of Fringe I’ve ever seen, and after years of watching Law & Order, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why the doctor wasn’t their very first suspect. In fact, the thought that the guy who knows everything about the study could possibly be behind the problems revolving around it, didn’t even cross their minds until the whole goofy split personality thing came up.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Did anyone catch the first name of the doctor? I ask because I knew a Lakshmi Nayak in college, and the doctor’s name sounded awfully close to that.
October 16th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
“Also, what’s the problem with shooting the server? Seems to be pretty strait-forward and efficient.”
Maybe because it’s pretty ineffective: computer cases mostly contain air to allow a proper cooling stream. Also: even if you hit a picee of electronic inside the box, it doesn’t need to be a essentiell component (think about plug ‘n play) so the server continues normally.
Even ripping randomly cables off the case would be more effective than shooting it.
October 16th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
“Now, dreams generally occur in REM sleep, which comes after non-REM sleep. So the chips fix the sleep by removing something that hasn’t even occurred yet.”
Well, non-REM dreams tend to be “aural” dreams rather than the vivid and discontinuous visual ones that take place during REM sleep. But still, point taken.
And, it was a pretty lackluster episode story-wise.
October 17th, 2009 at 12:30 am
I am rather surprised that anyone would think that someone stealing nightmares (as opposed to dreams in general) is a pervert. After all, look at the content of most horror/slasher films and their popularity. Although they are not to my taste ( in general being both gory and stupid (or is that stupid and gory?)), they are also worse than my nightmares ever have been. So anyway, unless the millions of people who like horror/slasher films are perverts, then this guy should not be considered a pervert. I would be willing to concede that people who enjoy horror/slasher films are perverts by the way. . .
Now what I find perverted is simply stealing dreams in general: that is, the invasion of privacy, rather than the thrill of watching something horrible. That is why peeping toms are considered perverts after all (as well as the fact that many of them escalate to more active crimes).
October 17th, 2009 at 12:35 am
By the way folks. Straight (as is meant in this context) is spelled “straight”. Strait is a term that means a narrow body of water, generally connecting two larger bodies of water (such as the Strait of Gibraltar) or may mean trouble, such as in dire straits. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but the error was being perpetuated.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“2. We Solve the Problem by Breaking the Space-Time Continuum
Let me get this straight: the brain chip is used to correct non-REM sleep disorders. It does this by siphoning off dreams. Now, dreams generally occur in REM sleep, which comes after non-REM sleep. So the chips fix the sleep by removing something that hasn’t even occurred yet.”
It seems like the dreams weren’t being stolen until Nayak set up the system to do so. The first guy’s dream log suggests that he was having REM sleep. So the chip was working, until Nayak figured out he could steal the dreams, and when he started to steal the dreams it killed the patients (or at least when he turned up the intensity).
Now whether it makes sense that he can steal “more” dreams and accelerate the exhaustion can be debated.
October 19th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Thanks for point #7!
They are frantically trying to disable the device (by typing on the keyboard, like he knows the software that is being run), then shoot the server? Umm… move the server, find the plug, unplug. I just did the same thing they did in about 10% of the time, and I saved all the data on the server in the process…
I understand how people don’t understand hacking and DDOS attacks and such, but not knowing that those magically glowing lights on the server are powered by an electrical outlet? That’s 1st grade science!
October 19th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
As a side note I knew an MA who routinely said “Blood CBC” and it became a running joke at the clinic.
I’m in DR’s offices a lot. I overhear things :)
October 21st, 2009 at 10:10 pm
I actually quite enjoyed the idea that Bug (or whatever his name was in the episode, he’s always just going to be Bug from Crossing Jordan) was actually the addict and that his last attempt to catch the perp (which happened to be him) was an attempt to stop himself from killing more people.
But getting there was a little more painful than usual.
I’m just glad to see the Doomsday clock hasn’t expired. ‘cos I do love this show.
October 26th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
“I understand how people don’t understand hacking and DDOS attacks and such, but not knowing that those magically glowing lights on the server are powered by an electrical outlet? That’s 1st grade science!”
Unless the servers were specialized and had internal power supplies. You don’t want an accidental power outage to just suddenly stop your servers, but that’s kind of extreme. Normally you have your servers connected to a UPS that can keep your machines running for a couple hours allowing you to safely shut them down, and you can usually un-plug those as well.
In any case we know the real reason why Dunham shot the server to pieces: it’s the Rule of Cool.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:42 am
Ugh, the “all hair turns white” thing bothers me as much or more so than “psychic nosebleeds”, and is probably just as common.
Leave a Reply
Contact Me
About
Subscribe:
The Best Of...
Special Topics
Archives
Categories
Twitter
Comic Blogs
Medical/Science Blogs
Currently Reading
Arbitrarily Interesting Medical Condition
Syndrome
The Net:
Contents may have settled during shipping. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Void where prohibited by law. All rights reserved. Not valid with other offers or specials. Professional driver on a closed track. Your financial institution may impose other fees. All models are over 18 years of age. Employees must wash hands before returning to work. Results not typical. Many suitcases look alike. 18% gratuity added to tables of six or more.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
© 2004-2010 Polite Dissent. Powered by WordPress